A Monodrama for Carolyn August - Chapter 56

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 56.
“I had a dream, you know? A dream that you abandoned me completely and left…….”
The psychiatrist’s conclusion was that Michelle had dementia.
It became clear that insisting Aiden was her son wasn’t going to help the situation much.
“I’m Aiden. Not Martin, not Viscount Malentain Roman—your son.”
Still, Aiden was stubborn about it.
Was he supposed to play his father in front of his mother now?
After acting out countless roles all this time, was he now meant to mimic that maggot of a being who had abandoned them and fled?
And for what?
Merely for that woman’s happiness?
Refusing to accept the reality, Aiden made his existence clear again and again.
But…….
“What are you talking about? I don’t have any children. I’m not even married…….”
“…….”
“Who are you? Why are you in our house? Wait, Mother, Father……!”
Every attempt failed.
Michelle’s memory had frozen before she’d ever had a child.
Perhaps it was fitting—those had been her happiest years.
Only then did Aiden accept it.
He had left no mark in Michelle’s memory.
Whether because there were no good memories or because there had always been only bad ones, the reason remained unclear, but Aiden felt only bitterness.
An existence better erased.
‘At least it’s fair.’
That’s what Aiden thought.
Hadn’t she forgotten everything that happened after she had him?
When he’d written to Mileva for help and summoned her, Michelle remembered her, but not her own child.
“Mileva, I’m sure I saw you yesterday, but why do you seem so different……?”
“Yesterday? Michelle, we haven’t seen each other in over ten years.”
“What are you saying? I was practicing ballet with you until yesterday.”
“We both quit ballet, Michelle. You have a child, and I have children too. You know I have three sons.”
“You have sons? That can’t be right. What are you talking about?”
After putting in all his effort to raise him this way.
After monitoring him, breaking down his door, sleeping him in the Attic beneath her room when he was small, beating him with a cane if he didn’t play his role properly—all that struggle.
It was almost funny that she didn’t remember him after all that care, but Aiden was fine with it.
Until Michelle remembered Will.
“You need to wear your hat. Where’s the hat, Clown Will?”
The memory of his entire body breaking into chills as if he’d seen a ghost was still vivid.
That day, he’d hidden something in the hat and was acting alone without wearing Will’s Clown Hat.
At the sudden sound of a voice, he spun around to find Michelle standing there.
“How can an actor forget that? Props are basics.”
The first shock was that Michelle remembered Aiden’s character.
She still didn’t know it was connected to her son, and she didn’t know the man before her was her son.
And the second shock was that Michelle could speak so gently.
Hadn’t Aiden always received harsh criticism from her regarding his acting?
Being slapped, splashed with cold water.
Everything he’d experienced until now—being beaten with a cane, locked in his room.
But Michelle’s face as she looked at Aiden in the room, stripped of her memory, was so peaceful.
There was no callousness, no relentless obsession to seize upon every flaw.
The way she spoke was almost like gently mocking a neighborhood boy for dropping his shoes.
‘It can’t be.’
Will, Friedman……. Michelle remembered every character Aiden had ever played.
Yet she still forgot any connection to Aiden himself.
And Aiden found that peaceful communication with Michelle was possible as long as he existed as one of those characters.
That was it.
Aiden Darvel could never truly be himself in front of his mother.
Whether for acting practice or for communication with her.
Each character deepened its grip on Aiden’s personality, and his hunger for immersion manifested in the form of him wandering the nights in the shape of those roles.
Aiden himself was coming to guess at his own state by observing the changed landscape before and after sleep.
It was after Michelle Belota Darvel died that he began to think of death.
It was not a sudden death.
Her weakening frame had progressed from being unable to walk on her own to struggling even to move her hands.
She could no longer lift a spoon, could not drink water, could not chew.
Time passed until even breathing became a burden, digestion itself an ordeal.
And so she departed from the world.
Aiden remembered vividly the last sound that came from the skeletal woman’s lips.
“Martin….”
In the end, Michelle spent more of her life chasing a man she loved alone than during the years they had been together.
What remained afterward was her traces and a mansion so massive and laden with useless things it could never be emptied.
Servants trained to match the era when Michelle was subject to her fits of hysteria.
And Aiden.
‘What do I have left?’
After his mother’s funeral, Aiden walked slowly through the Mansion, examining each room.
Everything was something he cared nothing for.
The necklaces, brooches, and dresses that Michelle had grimly collected.
The artworks he had been beaten for as a child, forced again and again to sell.
The Mansion was full of objects.
They were valuable too, and many were dazzling in their splendor. Yet Aiden felt a hollow ache in his chest.
There were things everywhere, but he possessed nothing.
‘So what is it?’
What else should he have?
What more should he have accomplished?
How many trophies had he won through his acting career?
The magazines that had interviewed him were countless, and he had earned considerable wealth.
Fame? Popularity? What was it he had failed to grasp?
For more than a week he pondered, working into the dawn.
He drank, emptied bottles of ink, and scrawled words across paper in fever.
The conclusion was singular.
‘I don’t know.’
And the moment he discovered that, Aiden understood his life had been wrong.
He was so thoroughly malformed that he could not even identify what was broken.
Like a pretty fruit that rots within, he might have seemed brilliant to others, but inside there was only emptiness.
‘Is it only that—emptiness?’
If that were all, it would have been a mercy.
But he was tilted toward something far worse.
No one had ever warned him; whether it was sleepwalking or something deeper, he could not say—but he suffered from a strange mental affliction.
The acting he had practiced his whole life, if he were to confess honestly, was something close to hatred.
He had acted while being struck, and he could only act while denying his own nature.
Endless demands from his mother and immersion in a character that was not his own.
Now that Michelle lay dead and buried in the earth, there was no reason for him to continue acting.
What followed happened with relentless swiftness.
[The greatest young actor, every woman’s leading man…… suddenly declares retirement!]
Aiden refused every casting call and love letter, announcing his retirement.
And deciding to put his affairs in order and prepare to meet death, he resolved to repay the fans who had given him some measure of affection by inviting them—a final gift before the end.
* * *
This was the backstory of the Game Stage.
Not the main stage, but an Event Quest that players discover while playing.
The truth that Caroline must uncover.
[Congratulations. You have discovered Aiden’s secret.]
[As a reward, you are given Aiden at 3 AM.]
‘Aiden at 3 AM?’
What on earth was that supposed to be?
“What is that?” Caroline called out into empty space.
But no answer came back.
‘It says it’s a reward.’
Yet it did not appear before her eyes.
Caroline could understand well enough.
‘This is something I’ll have to figure out for myself too.’
Her Diary was already full of information she had gathered through long struggle.
And she would have to struggle again going forward.
Caroline rubbed her temples, her face heavy with exhaustion.
A tumultuous day came to an end.
She had discovered why Aiden longed for death.
‘Wait.’
“So what’s next? What am I supposed to do?”
There was no answer in return.
She had clearly completed the Mission, yet why wasn’t the next one being offered to her?
First, Caroline hauled her weary body up and bathed.
‘Tomorrow. I’ll figure it out tomorrow.’

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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